John Myers
A wheat allergy severely restricts your diet. Wheat allergy sufferers not only have to avoid wheat but also related grain products. Even the indication “gluten-free” on food packaging does not automatically mean that those affected can consume the product without hesitation. Anyone suffering from a wheat allergy can, however, resort to wheat-free substitute products. Flour or bread, for example, is also made from types of grain that do not cause allergies.
People who are diagnosed with a wheat allergy must fundamentally change their diet. Not only wheat and wheat products are taboo for allergy sufferers, unripe spelt (harvested unripe spelled) and spelt (a type of wheat) must also be removed from the menu. Wheat subspecies such as kamut, einkorn, and two-grain also trigger an allergic reaction.
However, a wheat-free diet does not mean simply avoiding gluten. Gluten-free wheat starch is often used as a gluten substitute in products that are labeled as gluten-free. This is usually not a problem for people with gluten intolerance, but people allergic to wheat suffer from allergy symptoms when eating such foods. For example, for a wheat-free diet, a product must not contain wheat malt, breadcrumbs, bulgur, couscous, vital gluten, durum wheat, modified wheat-based starch, or wheat bran.
Allergy sufferers must of course completely avoid wheat or spelled flour. As an alternative, however, flour made from rye, oats, chestnuts, millet, barley, or rice can be used for baking. If you need wheat starch for cooking, you can use potato or corn starch as a substitute. Pasta made from durum wheat semolina can be replaced with corn, rice, soy, or buckwheat noodles. Buckwheat is a knotweed plant with nutty grains that, despite its misleading name, is unrelated to wheat. A bread recipe that does not contain any wheat at all is, for example, our Life Changing Bread. Here you can find more information and ideas for bread substitutes.
From a medical point of view, a wheat allergy is a clinical picture in which the immune system usually reacts excessively to an actually harmless protein in the outer shell of wheat grains. The gluten inside the endosperm can also trigger the allergy. In these cases, the human immune system recognizes the components of the grain as a hostile foreign substance and produces corresponding antibodies. If these antibodies hit the wheat proteins, an inflammation develops, which manifests itself in symptoms such as abdominal pain, indigestion, or circulatory problems.
